Generally, most people with successful enterprises have, in one way or another, some sort of help from other business contacts. A business mentor provides advice and direction to rising star entrepreneurs from their past experiences.
Your achievement journey can guide and inspire others as it does transfer knowledge to the next generation. As a result, you help the rising entrepreneurs save valuable time on their journey to success.
However, not everyone qualifies to be a business mentor. For you to be a business mentor, experience is paramount. You also need to possess excellent listening skills and patience. This will help you carefully assess your mentee and guide them accordingly. Following are some tips to help you become a good business mentor.
Listen and Communicate
Typically, when your mentee comes for your advice, they should have their own chosen career path. Your goal as a mentor is to assist them in achieving their goal. For this reason, listening is a vital skill if you desire to be a valued business mentor.
Be sure to allow your mentee to express their ambitions, career path, and expectations while avoiding imposing your plan or opinion. Once your mentee has shared their desires, you will then discuss their ideas which require practical communication skills.
You should avoid sounding judgmental while communicating with your mentee as they would feel insecure the entire time. Instead, ensure you win their trust once you start communicating with them. Validating their ideas and viewpoints is crucial in forming a basis of agreement, which builds trust. Never invalidate them – instead, you could suggest taking alternate views. This is crucial in aiding them to build confidence.
Additionally, as a mentor, you should learn your mentee’s desires, goals, feelings, and challenges for you to offer the best support. In the end, you want the mentee to solve their problems. You’re simply helping them solve them in a manner that will increase the survival potential for their business.
Practice Empathy
Understanding your mentee’s feelings and perspective is another crucial aspect for a business mentor. Be sure to help them remain encouraged during their bad days or when they feel demoralized. Any mentor worth his weight has faced setbacks in their own business – e.g., trusting the wrong people, compromising, or being reasonable to hit business targets. Be open with your mentee and share stories of how you grew through the same type of challenges.
Empathy is the ability to understand your mentee’s situation and act accordingly to help them overcome it. To attain this, you need to be curious about others, listen more, and appreciate other people. Also, be sure to learn how to break ignorant and false stigma notions.
Additionally, it would be best to learn to put away your feelings to help you speak clearly. Patience is also vital as not everyone will understand all that you say the first time, and others may not find your approach effective.
Generally, the main goal of a mentor is to offer guidance to your mentee, thus helping them avoid making the same mistakes that you made along the way to your success.